A few months ago, I went to a local florist in Tokyo to buy my wife flowers. The florist asked me what the special occasion was. No occasion, I said – I just wanted to surprise my wife. “That’s what husbands do, right?” I asked.
She sighed. “You should tell that to Japanese husbands.”
That life episode stuck in my mind as I watched what many of us on the Japanese Discord agreed was a silly, silly drama. On the other hand, it’s also one of two dramas in the current Japanese TV season depicting women hating on their husbands. Some Japanese media and culture critics have lambasted the two dramas, missing out on the larger truths that both address.
The premise of 子宮恋愛 (shikyuu renai) is…well, exactly what it sounds like. 29-year-old protagonist Tomada Maki is a perennial people-pleaser married to a man who barely pays her any attention. He doesn’t even eat the food that Maki painstakingly makes for him, skipping the dinner she cooked in favor of store-bought noodles.
One day, at a work event, Maki encounters Yamate Akira, a charming playboy, who scolds her for being such a doormat. When he meets her at an after-work get-together the next day, he takes her to task again for using the word 主人 (shujin) to refer to her husband. “Aren’t you the main character (主人公; shujinkō) of your own life?”
You can watch the scene in this clip on X as Maki’s uterus literally responds to the comment. Maki’s falling in love. Rather, as later episodes explain, her uterus is falling in love with this handsome but completely unreliable ikemen.
